In recent years The Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) Malta and SUNx Malta have shared a fruitful cooperation. Professor Geoffrey Lipman discusses their Climate Friendly Travel Diploma, as well as looking ahead to the future.

ITS and SUNx Malta started their Climate Friendly Travel program together in 2020 in a discussion between Leslie Vella, Chair of SUNx Malta and myself, as its President, with Pierre Fenech and Glen Farrugia ITS’s CEO and Academic COO respectively.

Our goal was to put an academic underpinning to the program, and our Decade Strategy of 100,000 Strong Climate Champions by 2030. We discovered a genuine shared interest in creating a new game changing course that would become a beacon of high standards and good practice for smart inquisitive students, as well as practical for an industry and its policymakers trying to manage massive change.

Climate Friendly Travel Diploma

We launched our Climate Friendly Travel Diploma in October 2020 with 30 Scholarships for students around the world, agreed by the Minister of Tourism in Malta. In 2021, we completed our first academic year of teaching the principles of Climate Friendly Travel. 

The brand new course engaged 25 top academics and policymakers from a dozen countries under my direction. Because of COVID 19, we opted for an online course with 300 hours of teaching and learning.

Climate Friendly Travel Culture

For the first year, we taught the culture of Climate Friendly Travel – linked to the SDGs and Paris 1.5.

This traces the global sustainability and climate change movement through the actions and thinking of my close friend, the late Maurice Strong, climate and sustainability activist half a century ago.

It starts with the Stockholm Earth Summit in 1972, the first Earth Summit, which Strong organized, and the creation of UNEP, of which he was its first Executive Director. It features the second Earth Summit in 1992, that Strong also organized. It looks at the birth of the UN Climate Agency (UNFCCC) and the annual COP program. It majors on Agenda 21 that Strong led and the Earth Council he launched in 2000 with Mikael Gorbachev, as a Charter between Planet and People.

Throughout the course, we have explored the impacts of Climate Friendly Travel on Tourism companies, communities and consumers, weaving in the evolving position and vision of SUNx Malta.

Climate Friendly Travel Internships

For the second year we have created a novel internship program with the students operating in teams. They help operate our CFT system, with its Registry of Ambitions, SDG 17 Partnerships, Good Practice Research Library and distinctive CFT Eco badge (see below). They are also being taught to provide virtual support to the increasing number of companies and destinations who are engaging in Climate Friendly Travel.

This has helped to prepare them to become Strong Climate Champions in their own countries and to curate networks of National Strong Climate Champions to support the development and integration of local CFT communities. These local champions are also trained in a series of short induction courses that provides an intensive learning experience. We are currently working to find local and international sponsors for the program. 

A Strong Future Together

In March 2022, we will announce 50 Strong Scholarships to the world's Least Developed Countries (LDCs). This will celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the Stockholm Earth Summit, where it all began and the UN Environment Program (UNEP) that Maurice Strong helped create and bring, as the first major UN initiative to be based to Africa in 1972.

In the last week of April, together with the World Tourism Network / International Climate & Tourism Partners (WTN/ICTP) we will host the online Strong Climate Friendly Travel Festival, which will incorporate our 2^nd Strong Earth Youth Summit (SEYS) on 29 April every year.

Later in the year we will introduce our CFT Diploma in China and in India – the world's two most populous countries – the former having some nine million graduates annually. We also plan to accelerate deployment of our short CFT induction courses to keep building more and more national Strong Climate Champions. In this context, we are looking forward to engaging even more deeply with ITS and to develop our successful collaboration further.